Lists and Stories
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Princess Diana: A Life in Pictures Princess Diana lived a short but remarkable life. Once known as “Shy Di,” she became one of the world’s biggest celebrities, noted for both her glamor and her humanitarian work, and she forever changed the British monarchy. Decades after her death in 1997, Princess Diana’s legacy endures. list,... -
Prominent HBCU Alumni Most people know their names, but some may not know that these celebrities and prominent people attended Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs. The country’s top Black elected official, Vice President Kamala Harris, graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. So did the... -
Queen Elizabeth’s Court Occultist In 2016, X-ray examination of Henry Gillard Glindoni’s painting John Dee Performing an Experiment before Elizabeth I revealed that a circle of human skulls was present in an earlier version of the work. The finished painting depicts a scene that looks rather like a mundane chemistry experiment, but... -
Queen Mab’s Stable: 7 of the Smallest Animals Size isn’t everything. These Lilliputian creatures, the smallest in their respective taxonomic groups, show that diminution has its advantages. list, smallest animals, small, size, evolution, smallest frog, smallest snake, smallest mammal, smallest fish, smallest cetacean, animals, cute, teeny,... -
Questions About COVID-19 Answered Through illness, community and national lockdowns, and economic downturn, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of billions of people worldwide. At Britannica we have been fielding questions about the pandemic from readers since the beginning of the pandemic, and we’ve had a few questions of... -
Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought for Their Lives in a Killer Workplace At the onset of World War I, several factories were established across the United States to produce watches and military dials painted with a material containing radium, a radioactive element that glows in the dark. Hundreds of young women were hired for the well-paying painting jobs because their... -
Real Stories Behind the Oscar Nominees Learn about the people who inspired some of the films nominated for Academy Awards in 2015. spotlight, spotlight, oscars, academy, awards, film, art,... -
Remembering Malcolm X Activist Malcolm X would have turned 90 years old on May 19, 2015. A passionate and gifted orator, Malcolm X rose to prominence as a black nationalist leader who advocated vociferously for civil rights. He was assassinated in 1965 by three Nation of Islam members. spotlight, Malcolm X, birthday,... -
Remembering the Lusitania Britannica remembers the Lusitania, which sank on May 7, 1915, after being torpedoed by a German U-boat. Nearly 1,200 people died, and the incident contributed indirectly to the U.S.’s entering World War I. spotlight, Lusitania, World War I, U-boat, anniversary,... -
Rest in Peace? Not for These 7 Unlucky Individuals Death is usually the end. For these seven people, things only got weirder after they died. list, death, corpse, Formosus, False Dmitry I, Gram Parsons, Catherine of Valois, F.W. Murnau, Charlie Chaplin, Evita PerónAt least in death one can hope to escape life’s torments and insults. For some,... -
Returning to a Galaxy Far, Far Away This week, one of the most eagerly awaited cinema experiences of the decade opens at movie theatres around the world. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the seventh film in a movie and merchandising franchise that has earned more than $37 billion since the first movie blasted through theatres in 1977.... -
Riding Freedom: 10 Milestones in U.S. Civil Rights History On May 4, 1961, a group of seven African Americans and six white people left Washington, D.C., on the first Freedom Ride in two buses bound for New Orleans. They were hoping to provoke the federal government into enforcing the 1960 Supreme Court ruling in Boynton v. Virginia, which forbade “unjust... -
Rio Recap On August 21, 2016, the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ended in Rio de Janeiro, capping two weeks of drama, record-setting performances, and a fair share of controversy. While some observers gave the Games mixed reviews, many considered them a triumph for a city struggling with political instability, a... -
Roman Catholic Saints In Roman Catholicism and certain other Christian faith traditions, a saint is a holy person who is known for his or her “heroic sanctity” and who is thought to be in heaven. In the 10th century, Pope John XV formalized a process for the identification of saints. Before that time, saints were... -
Running of the Bulls Every year from July 6 to July 14, the city of Pamplona in northeastern Spain holds a rollicking festival dedicated to the city’s first bishop and patron, Saint Fermín. There’s drinking, parades, dancing, and revelry late into the night. To an uninitiated observer, it would all look pretty normal... -
Russian Revolution Timeline Note: The dates in this timeline follow the Gregorian calendar, currently in use in Russia and around the world. At the time the revolution happened, Russia used the Julian calendar. Sources using Julian dates differ from the dating presented here. list, Russian Revolution, Russia, U.S.S.R., Soviet... -
Salvador Dalí Turns 111 Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904. Dalí’s art took inspiration from exploring the unconscious, creating suggestive and disturbing images. He’s best known for The Persistence of Memory (1931), a painting of melting watches set against an eerie deserted... -
San Francisco: 9 Claims to Fame The history of San Francisco feels like the history of the American West in a nutshell. From its beginnings as a rough and tumble Gold Rush settlement, to its adolescence as a counterculture capital, to its current incarnation as a high-tech metropolis, San Francisco has managed to pack a lot of... -
Saving Sharks in the 2020s Shark finning is the harvesting of a shark’s lateral, dorsal, and lower tail fins, which is often followed by releasing the shark alive back into the ocean, where it later dies. In the early 21st century the public began to learn how the commercial fishing industry contributed to the spread and the... -
Saving the World’s Largest Trees There are giants in the isolated Sierra Nevada mountains of California—ancient red giants, the last of their kind. Although they were known for centuries by Native Americans, it wasn’t until the 1830s that the most-massive trees in the world, the giant sequoias, were “discovered” by white hunters....